Jump to content
IGNORED

When you think you killed the F18A


Sinphaltimus

Recommended Posts

Check your cable.

Recently received an F18A.

 

I was playing Castle Conquer when my screen goes black and the TV reports "No Signal". My heart sank. I could hear the game still playing without video. I reset the console...nothing... just the beeps telling me the console itself is working. I feel around back and the cable is firmly connected to the console. Get up off my seat and glance at the back of the TV. VGA cable is disconnected. I forgot to screw in the fasteners. Shut off console, plugged in cord and well yeah. F18A is fine.

 

Don't ever do that. Especially if you have a heart condition.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That regularly happens with any particular piece of TI hardware. My favorite one is when the HDX DSR gets corrupted, and on my system it seems to do that A LOT because of all my tinkering. When that happens, the system becomes flaky, with some cards not working at all and some erratically. For a moment my heart sinks with the thought of my IDE and pCode cards dying an ignominious death, only to be found alive and well later on.

This really can drive a man to drink... :D

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That regularly happens with any particular piece of TI hardware. My favorite one is when the HDX DSR gets corrupted, and on my system it seems to do that A LOT because of all my tinkering. When that happens, the system becomes flaky, with some cards not working at all and some erratically. For a moment my heart sinks with the thought of my IDE and pCode cards dying an ignominious death, only to be found alive and well later on.

This really can drive a man to drink... :D

Please elaborate. As I am now using HDX with my nano. What a dream come true there. It certainly relieves strain on my fr99 as I no longer need to create a bin, unplug sd card, plug in, sd card, copy bin, unplug sd card, plug in sd card, run on real iron. Now, I just compile to XB and copy over null modem to dsk1. Although, I still have to unplug the carts to test. But I put my money on the carts being more resilient towards this than my sd card.

 

Which is why I'd love get my hands on a cartridge expander.

Edited by Sinphaltimus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please elaborate. As I am now using HDX with my nano. What a dream come true there. It certainly relieves strain on my fr99 as I no longer need to create a bin, unplug sd card, plug in, sd card, copy bin, unplug sd card, plug in sd card, run on real iron. Now, I just compile to XB and copy over null modem to dsk1. Although, I still have to unplug the carts to test. But I put my money on the carts being more resilient towards this than my sd card.

 

Which is why I'd love get my hands on a cartridge expander.

 

He's talking about the pbox version with the battery backed daughterboard.. it's just ram so it's possible to corrupt if you have a crash that writes to rom memory locations.. Or if your battery is dieing..

 

Greg

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

He's talking about the pbox version with the battery backed daughterboard.. it's just ram so it's possible to corrupt if you have a crash that writes to rom memory locations.. Or if your battery is dieing..

 

Greg

 

Exactly. Although sometimes playing with the parallel port without turning off the PEB can do strange things as well. Bad idea if you ask me, but I never learn...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Exactly. Although sometimes playing with the parallel port without turning off the PEB can do strange things as well. Bad idea if you ask me, but I never learn...

I prefer to tinker with the power on :) It is neat to see what is stable and what isn't... The newer stuff all seems more sensitive than the legacy stuff... :)

 

Someone on hear said they provided an alternate power supply to the HDX daughter-board... AA batteries, I think it was... I'm not sure what is worse... having it misbehave every 2 years, or every 6 months? At every 6 months, at least I remember what is wrong.... I've been thinking of giving it a wall-supply. If I unplug it, I know I'll need to reload the DSR. If I don't, it should be mostly stable.

Granted, I'm not tinkering with my PEB system.

 

-M@

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was playing Castle Conquer when my screen goes black and the TV reports "No Signal". My heart sank.

Occasionally my screen shows random graphics after starting up a game. Now I know my speech synthesizer – nanoPEB combo has a bad connection, but the first time I feared the worst. :woozy:

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I prefer to tinker with the power on :) It is neat to see what is stable and what isn't... The newer stuff all seems more sensitive than the legacy stuff... :)Someone on hear said they provided an alternate power supply to the HDX daughter-board... AA batteries, I think it was... I'm not sure what is worse... having it misbehave every 2 years, or every 6 months? At every 6 months, at least I remember what is wrong.... I've been thinking of giving it a wall-supply. If I unplug it, I know I'll need to reload the DSR. If I don't, it should be mostly stable.Granted, I'm not tinkering with my PEB system.-M@

Yeah that was me :) Just hot glued an AA battery holder to the board and connected it to the HDX. Works like a charm...

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

... and adding a spst switch inline is a great way to clear things if anything does corrupt the DSR. Click off, count to 5, click back on and reload. Of course now that I have that insurance in place, I've not needed it... that figures, right? Of course if you are only running one RS-232 card, a switch for the interrupt line is good to have too.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...